Architecture in the United States. 269 



cemetery is just without the suburbs, in a retired and quiet spot, and at 

 a distance from great public roads : it should border on the more genteel 

 part of the town, that the solemnity of the place may not be disturbed by 

 unpleasant sights and sounds; and, above all, it should be in a part not 

 liable to be encroached upon in the greater enlargement of the town. 

 The lapse of a few years sees our waste places become villages, our 

 villages towns, our towns cities, and our cities double and treble their 

 extent. Should the burying ground then be in a neighborhood de- 

 sirable for building, it will soon be surrounded, checked in its increase, 

 filled and abandoned : in a few generations the reverence for it will 

 be lost, and bones laid in the earth in hopes of a peaceful rest, will 

 be thrown out on the world to be subject to vulgar insult and derision. 

 No one can think without pain of this in regard to himself or his 

 friends ; and we should avoid it, as I have said, by seeking for our 

 cemeteries, spots least exposed to such things. 



There let us bury our dead without ostentation or parade. I have 

 seen so many graves just torn open by hostile pillage, or curiosity, or 

 avarice, that I exceedingly dislike any thing in a grave that can tempt 

 the cupidity of man. I should reprobate even a leaden coffin and 

 almost the common plate used to designate the name and age. A 

 vault may please the living, but is apt to be an evil to the dead. To 

 me certainly it would be distressing, to think that the remains of a 

 dear friend were in an exposed and tempting situation, to be proba- 

 bly in a few ages torn from thence, and scattered wantonly on the 

 world. Far better would it be to have them in the silent earth, 

 where no one would care to search for them ; there to repose and 

 mingle quietly " dust vnXh. dust," till called to a brighter and happier 

 state. This is a security which even the pyramids have failed to 

 procure. 



It would be an interesting employment to analyze the feelings that 

 prompt to the erection of memorials over the dead. We should prob- 

 ably come from it somewhat wiser as to the world around us ; for a 

 burying ground with its " storied urns," is after all a better place to 

 study the character of the living than of the dead : but all this is foreign 

 to our purpose. It is sufficient to say that the very idea of a monu- 

 ment includes in it, something that will last. By a monument in this 

 case, I mean any thing set up to commemorate the dead. In New 

 England the word is generally used to signify a compound of a 

 base and a square prism, surmounted by a pyramid, or urn, or 

 both : in the middle states, a horizontal slab, elevated about two 



